


Your Thoughts?

by ariiadne



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, F/M, Historical References, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship, Puns & Word Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:32:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariiadne/pseuds/ariiadne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short, random FO4 drabble featuring my sole survivor, Penelope. She reflects on what her name meant then and what her name means now.</p><p>Her father had called her his Lucky Penny. But she did not feel lucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Thoughts?

Penelope. Her father had called her his Lucky Penny, and would on many occasions slide a copper coin her way and ask “a penny for your thoughts?” just to see her roll her eyes or groan.

Pennies had always been a lucky find, anyway. Inflation bloated the decomposing economy in her time, and the little Lincoln coins were the first to go, quite long ago.

As much as her father’s humor pained her as a child, she proudly owned it later. Before he’d left for the war, she’d given Nate one of the few pennies she could find. A Penny for his thoughts. A Penny for luck.

But her luck must have ran out. As she looked upon the dead and damaged wasteland that had once been her home, that seemed to be the only logical conclusion. Either that, or by some cruel irony, the luck saved her a spot in that vault and made sure she sat on ice for 200 years. She did not feel lucky.

But she had to be. There was no other explanation as to why she was still alive. Atom bombs. Experimental cryogenics. Radiation. Ghouls. Exposure. Super Mutants. Raiders. All of these she survived, and she did not know how. It had to be luck.

Pre-war money littered the Commonwealth in an unsettlingly nonchalant way. Stacks of bills sat untouched in registers – useless and forgotten. Of all the scavenging she was forced to do, however, digging into garbage and debris, she had yet to find a penny.

“Your thoughts?” she’d ask, more frequently the longer they traveled together. Hancock was happy to oblige. Like his namesake, he was unafraid to voice his opinion, each statement from his mouth just as defiantly crafted as those sweeping ink strokes to first grace the Declaration of Independence. 

When he cared enough to ask for hers, she joked. “It’ll cost you.” A penny for her thoughts. But it’s not really a joke when you have to explain it. Hancock’s misshapen brow somehow managed to wrinkle more as it rose, perplexed. After awkwardly elaborating, she cleared her throat and answered, pretending it never happened.

Months later, he’d call to her. “Here,” he’d say, holding out his hand, “I owe ya.” A penny for her thoughts, resting in her palm. “That… is a penny, right?”

She did not think the penny could possibly mean more to her than it already had. When the things she’d seen and the things she’d done kept her up at night, she traced Lincoln’s badly eroded face. He reminded her why she’d chosen the path she tread.  _A house divided cannot stand._ Old Abraham had been a lawyer before he’d become president.  _This government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free._ She hated how much useless information she remembered from those high school and college classes. It didn’t help her, not here.

Honest Abe also lost his son at a very young age. They said it drove his wife to the brink of her sanity. What would Abe have done if, perhaps, his son was now older than he was and incredibly, impossibly making people to serve him? Would he have still delivered the Emancipation Proclamation?

“World’s always gonna have tyrants. But I get my way, there’ll be a lot less.”

“Sic semper tyrannis.” Her voice rang low, more a thought spoken out loud than an actual response.

“Huh?”

“It means ‘thus always to tyrants.’”

“You mean what you said were actual words?”

She grinned. “You know all this stuff about John Hancock, but nothing about Abraham Lincoln? I thought you’d be a fan.”

“I mean, I’ve heard of him. You told me he’s the one on the penny. Did he say that or something?”

“No. The man who killed him said it.”

“Did he earn it?”

“I don’t think so. I won’t subject you to a history lesson, though.”

The ghoul planted his feet in one spot, spread his arms and looked himself up and down before cocking an eyebrow to her, a smirk crawling along one side of his mouth. “You’re kidding, right?”


End file.
